Indiana Manufacturers Part of 3D Printing Initiative
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowPlymouth-based Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies and the University of Notre Dame are part of a multi-million dollar advanced manufacturing partnership. The $11 million collaboration is led by the University of Pittsburgh and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and could receive up to $8 million in additional funding from Ohio-based manufacturing industry initiative America Makes.
The program is designed to help participants commercialize their work.
America Makes calls itself a "national accelerator for additive manufacturing and 3D printing" technology.
ITAMCO says the project it is involved with will focus on developing design practices for support structures for manufacturing metal alloy parts. Current rules, the company says, are "fairly primitive" and do not consider part orientation, distortion or heat-related factors.
The company says the work among the four organizations will break down in the following way:
-The University of Notre Dame will provide the algorithms for modeling
-Johnson & Johnson will provide medical implant models for optimization
-The University of Pittsburgh will provide testing on their DMLS equipment
-ITAMCO will write the plug-in application for AutoDesk
AutoDesk is 3D design and engineering industry software.
ITAMCO Lead IT Developer Joel Neidig says "as a gear manufacturer, we will always do subtractive manufacturing, but we recognize that additive manufacturing is the future of our business."
The project is set to be complete in January 2017.